Methods to mobilize the Internet and deliver content are undergoing transformative changes. On the data networking side, mobile data network operators are able to provide mobile broadband services. On the application delivery side, cloud computing promises to simplify application roll outs and catalyze adoption across multiple verticals. However, inefficiencies in mobile content distribution and application delivery is impacting the entire value chain. Fundamentally, the value chain consists of a series of independent islands of technology and business owners, whose intentions and beliefs are often misaligned, leading to a number of inefficiencies due to the application and network not working in tandem. These inefficiencies include high mobile latencies, and inefficient use of network resources as well as application datacenter resources. Inefficiencies can be caused by data paths, where data requests from a network subscriber's device are received at a cell site, then sent to a local switching office, and then to a regional switching office en-route to a network peering point before being routed to an Internet datacenter that serves the application to the subscriber. The pathway within the wireless network is rooted on the need to provide multiple layers of mobility management and the need to centralize subscriber and session management. The pathway above the wireless network is due to network peering relationships, geographic distribution of such network peering points, and diversity of application datacenter locations above the network and centralized resource pooling of computing by application providers. Within the wireless network, the regional and central switching offices may not be local to the area where the subscriber is and hence, data served traverses several hundreds of miles before reaching the subscriber, creating a number of areas of inefficiency. More generally, applications are largely unaware of the network and tend to treat the network as a blackbox; conversely, networks are unaware of application needs and tend to treat applications as a sequence of packets. One problem of applications being unaware of the network, and network contours, is a network topology issue that contemporary over the top solutions cannot address. Given the economics of mobile data, operators do not find a compelling need to upgrade networks without content eco-system participation. Conversely, application awareness is not currently possible or available because it involves well more than just propagating a few parameters into the network. Network nodes typically deal with packets and methods to forward such packets, however, such network nodes are not suitable for dealing with applications. This mismatch between packet based network forwarding and the technology to service applications contributes to the current lack of application awareness within the network. In general, there is a lack of “end-to-end” intelligence between the two end points of an application, leading to significant over provisioning of resources within the mobile operator network and the various application datacenters. Existing mobile data networks are not built for a specific application, while there are thousands of applications, and conversely applications are not built for specific network types with network state information of a given network changing every instant.
Current partial solutions to the foregoing require an upgrade to the existing mobile data network and require mobile operators to re-architect their networks, which leads to significant increases in costs. However, even such upgrades and modifications are incapable of creating application awareness in the network or provide network awareness to the application.
In connection with the foregoing, it is desirable to have systems and methods that can reduce the number of hops between the end points of the application, by bringing mobile content and application servers and Internet cloud content closer to the subscriber, as well as creating optimized paths between the end points especially when the end points are both clients and are local to the area. It is also desirable to create optimal paths for traffic data from a local switching office, while preserving all layers of mobility and tiered deployments, and allowing applications and networks to work with each other without any modifications to the network or application datacenters. Additionally, it is desirable to create a framework along this optimized path wherein the network and application can work in tandem.